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The entire field of medical sciences has rendered evolution rendundant for humans - and veterinary sciences threaten to do so very soon for domesticated animals. All we can hope for is that we have indeed reached the apex biologically, seeing as from here on forward, our genetic material is only going one way - DOWNHILL.
By Boerseun
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I believe that view is pessimistic. C.M. Kornbluth wrote about this problem in a story called "The Marching Morons".
I have hope, though, in two solid factors that pessimists often overlook.
First, historically as well as epochally, the vast majority of species' breeders have ended in dead ends, while some niche breeders or small group within the species has erupted out of the genetic mean with an enhancement that spreads across the ecology like wildfire to establish a new equilibrium within the species until it differentiates itself into a new species. Recessive characterisrtics kill themselves off by being unsuccessful breeders while successful ones supplant the unsuccessful.
In other words, pessimists may confuse human survival successes with human survival failures. Teeth may be replaced by dentures or an electric food blender.
The second factor is Stephen Hawking.
By all rights he should be dead. He certainly is ill enough that he shouldn't be alive without assistence. Yet that assistance has kept him alive long enough to continue to fundamentally redirect our understanding of our existence. Call that one small incremental step in human "cultural evolution".
Our persistence in maintaining the weak and less biologically successful breeders among us has paid off in some remarkable species advantages over our animal competitors.
It is leading us medically toward genetic manipulation.
It may be soon possible to forget about braces and poor eyesight if you can fix it in the fertilized egg.
I am an optimist.
